Judd Apatow Talks Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

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The producer behind the Lonely Island movie.

By Josh Lasser

We recently had the chance to chat with comedy maestro Judd Apatow about his latest producing effort, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Here's what the Trainwreck and Knocked Up filmmaker had to tell us about helping the Lonely Island guys bring their comedy to the big screen.

IGN: Popstar is a music mockumentary and as such draws inevitable comparisons to Spinal Tap. Is the genre still fundamentally the same beast 30 years after Spinal Tap or has it changed dramatically?

Judd Apatow: Well, the way people make real music documentaries, you know, is very different – they're pretty turbo-charged these days. You know, back then, people weren't videotaping every second of their lives. So now, when they make these documentaries they can pretty much show every single moment of their careers. That was what was so funny about Beyoncé's documentary—the one she made about herself—she showed how she basically had been, you know, recording everything that she's done and is doing. And so, there's something funny about people making these movies about themselves that are supposed to be very real but also completely self-promotional. So we thought it would be funny to show what happens when someone tries to make one of these documentaries and their life falls apart while it's happening.

IGN: Right, and so with all these moments and all these pop stars' lives being rather over the top how do you ensure that those situations you present in the film that they go far enough while remaining vaguely believable?

Apatow: Well, that's, you know, I think… that's the delicate part of the editing. We want it to be super funny, but it's also an emotional story about a band breaking up and what happens when one person in a group gets super famous and the other two are somewhat left behind.

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IGN: Were there specific things you guys were looking at – specific bands or specific moments that you were trying to pull on when you were building that story?

Apatow: Well, I think about all bands. You know, I mean, I think about everybody from Peter Cetera leaving Chicago to Sting leaving The Police or Justin Timberlake leaving N'Sync and Beyoncé leaving Destiny's Child or all those videos Gwen Stefani made that were for No Doubt but they were about her becoming famous and causing problems in the band. That's something that I've always felt emotional about because you want these bands that you love to get along and then when they break up you worry about how everyone else is doing. How is Andrew Ridgeley doing these days? I hope he's okay. So we're tapping into a lot of those emotions.

IGN: So, when you build off of these real life occurrences, how close do you want to get to what is actually happening in real life and not just in terms of like the band breaking up, but I'm thinking of like Conner4Real, he goes to the Anne Frank house.

Apatow: Well, it's all meant to be silly, so we're not trying to get that close to real life, but here and there it's fun to make fun of things that have happened. But, for the most part we're just looking to make it as funny as we can make it.

IGN: Is there ever a fear when you're building it and trying to make it as funny as you can make it that you're going to lean too much towards… I don't want to say "being mean" but maybe engendering some bad will?

Apatow: No, I don't think we think too much about it. Those people are so exposed all day long. They show every aspect of their lives and I think the only way to survive as a modern star is to have some ability to withstand all the discussion and debate about you, because, you know, when you have 40 million Twitter and Instagram followers you're really exposing yourself to this gigantic debate about your value and about all the decisions you make. I don't know how people are able to survive it, it really must be very difficult.

IGN: It has to be quite impossible and here you have at the center, Conner, who, through all of these things, he can be somewhat unlikable, at least to those around him. What is the key to balancing a character like that so that they don't fall out of favor with the audience?

Apatow: Well, I think that everyone in life is trying to figure out how to live and how not to screw everything up and we all get lost in our egos and our self-interest. So, comedy works best when the lead person is making a lot of mistakes. He's no different than Michael Scott on The Office or Ron Burgundy or Steve Martin in The Jerk. When people are doing the right thing it's never funny.

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IGN: Probably true, probably true. Can you speak to the actual music that appears in the movie? Some of Conner's solo stuff, it has to find that sweet spot between being well produced and just an awful idea for a song at the same time.

Apatow: Yeah, I mean that's what I think the genius of The Lonely Island Guys is – they find a way to make a song that sounds exactly like a modern pop song but do something really hilarious with it, and they worked with a lot of the people who provide the beats for all the songs that are popular right now. They worked with a lot of great producers. One friend of ours, Greg Kurstin, who co-wrote the song, Hello and produced it for Adele and did a lot of the great Pink and Sia songs, helped polish or produce songs from the movie and that made a big difference in having it sound like what a modern, giant, hit song sounds like.

IGN: And the guys—The Lonely Island guys—they've been doing stuff together for years. They must have a shorthand that they use when talking about ideas. As a producer, did that take a while to pick up on and get involved in?

Apatow: Well, you know, they have their way of working and it's my job to, you know, read outlines and read drafts and tell them what I think is working and not working and then over years of debating things, we land on a script that they love and songs that they love, but that's the process. Luckily, we're all in sync comedically and with our intentions for the movie and they just did a brilliant job. This is the most complicated type of comedy to make because they're covering so many years and so much ground visually, emotionally, musically. So the movie feels very effortless but we worked on it for a very long time.

IGN: You said "years of debating things" and I read, I think, that you first talked to them about doing a movie back when they were on SNL. Is this movie like something that you guys had been talking about or is this specific idea newer than that?

Apatow: We started kicking this around when they left SNL. We all had been watching these documentaries by people like Katy Perry and Beyoncé and Bieber and One Direction and we thought, "oh, this is such a funny format -- like, the modern, fluff, documentary. What would happen if you were making a documentary about yourself and while it was happening your whole world caved in and your record didn't sell and everyone got mad at you." And it seemed like just a fun comedy format to tell an emotional story but also squeeze in an insane amount of jokes.

IGN: And you're actually working here with the two guys [Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone], they're co-directing the movie… [calls drops out]…it's their first time co-directing a feature, so I was wondering what the on-set learning curve was—or even before on-set—of your working with them on that level.

Apatow: Well, you know, they've made so many videos together. They've co-directed an enormous amount of times, but not on a feature film and for me, I stay focused on the script and the casting and making sure they have enough money and once they start shooting, I just get out of the way for the most part. I try to keep my eye on some of the emotional scenes, to try to make sure that we feel like we have what we need to tell our emotional story but, you know, these guys are so amazing at this style of comedy, it's really kind of a wonder to behold as they're doing it. They're doing things with giant crowds and music videos but then they're doing this kind of small, intimate, comedy that really allowed them to show off all their skills.

IGN: Can you give an example of one of those emotional scenes you helped them work on?

Apatow: Well, I mean, I just think the whole idea of the friendship between three guys whose careers are not going equally. I'm always interested in those dynamics between people. So, on some level, there's almost a Larry Sanders aspect to the movie, but it's about the music industry and what happens when one person gets more successful than the other two and how they all handle it.